After Singapore, a quick flight brought me to Taiwan. The mountains seemed to nestle into the clouds, which blanketed the sky. The view was beautiful until the plane dropped below the clouds and everything became gloomy, dark, and wet. The plane crossed expanses of farmland, a landscape I was not used to. After breezing through customs, I got on a bus and started to come “home.”

A long bus ride, a decent walk, and five flights of stairs brought me to my host’s house. I curled up and quickly fell asleep.

The next day brought plenty of excitement and a new city to explore. What I wasn’t expecting was for the pollution to aggravate my cold. Oh, my cold. Sometime in New Zealand I picked up a persistent cough. I wasn’t in pain and didn’t have a headache; I just couldn’t stop coughing at times. Highly annoying.

One of the first interesting things I saw was Taipei 101, then the world’s tallest building. From a medium distance it doesn’t look that tall, especially because Taipei has fewer tall buildings than Singapore. Once you get close, or stand at the bottom, you realize how tall 101 is: “Wow, that is one tall bamboo building.” From far away, the feeling is similar: “How can I still see that building all the way from here?”

I live in Taipei County and can still see Taipei 101 above the apartment rooftops.

The next few weeks consisted of a decent amount of work at Starbucks, finding a place to live, and preparing to enter school. My next post will cover those things in more detail.